Tuomas A. Laitinen’s work Protean Sap available on AVEK’s website for two weeks

Protean Sap consists of augmented reality filters and a single-channel video. The work creates a strange, dream-like reality where geometric formations encrust objects and bodies, paired with a mysterious seer’s text. The forms are simulated from protein chains of microbial life. These shapes are then changed through simulations into masks and ceremonial artefacts which are morphed in a hallucinatory way.

Protean Sap was available on our website 1.-14.10.2021. 

In the video, the metaphor for protean change is a tide pool; an intertidal zone influenced by the moon and the sun. This is an ecosystem that requires many adaptations from its inhabitants. Furthermore, it could be said that the intertidal zones can be seen as a gauge for the change that is happening in the oceans. These places are looked at as models for studying ecological change in general because the effects are seen at a more rapid pace. The protein chains link us to our past and our future, and in the work, they are mediated through a “looking device” and a seer, who utters recipes and predictions.

Tuomas A. Laitinen’s work Protean Sap (2020) was commissioned by Daata, Lighthouse Brighton, and The Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.

AR filters can be downloaded from Laitinen’s website.

Laitinen is the winner of the 2021 AVEK Award.